(click image to enlarge)
Morley Robert’s story is about the crew of the Castlebar, a five ton tramp ship, who while away the time on a long voyage by having a competition to see who can spin the best yarn with the prize, a pound of tobacco.
Coming last, Cockney Bill spins a wild tale of the Colonna, who half way across the Indian ocean with a large cargo of rice from Hong Kong suffers a fire, which the crew put out with water. But, the combination of heat and water cooks the rice and causes it to swell and swell out of the hold and up the rigging. The rice is gobbled up by the sea birds, but continues to swell inside them and they plummet down to feed the hungry tigers on the land and the sharks in the sea:
‘The sharks found them birds so tasty they went at 'em no allowance. And in the course of half an hour the water was fair biling [boiling] with sharks. But soon them sharks began a-sailing round as if they was satisfied and asking for no more. And Crit and me keeps our weather-eyes open, and soon we seed a young shark about nine feet long doing somersaults in the water wiv his mouth wide open and looking mighty uneasy, and very thick about the middle he was.
Then the water was fair biling wiv sharks, all wiv their mouths wide open, like as il you'd put a brick between their back teeth.
And the rice and the sea-birds began to bile out of 'em very terrible and tremenjus, as the pore old Coloma was doing. - And we lets on she was doomed. But all the time the skipper sat on the rail and smoked his pipe wiv his glass in his hand, as comfor'ble as if he was at home.’
The shaggy-dog story ends with a mutiny and a final twist winning Cockney Bill his pound of tobacco. The Story in the Strand Magazine was fully illustrated by Heath Robinson, of which this full page illustration was the frontispiece.
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